THE HOMING BEHAVIOR OF BEES.

The article presents a discussion related to the homing behavior of bees. For a great many years biologists and psychologists have been interested in the homing behavior of insects. A great number of isolated facts were collected. In most of these cases no particular experiments were made to determine the factors that give insects the ability to find their way home after having collected food far away from their nests. It was necessary to find an animal for which the experimental conditions might easily be controlled, and which could be handled by the experimenter in an easy manner. The insect with which most of the experimental work about homing has been done is the honeybee. There are two reasons for it. First of all, it is easy to keep these insects in sufficient number and under similar conditions; secondly, people knew a great many facts concerning their conduct, so that no preliminary studies in this respect had to be made. Bees accustomed to find their hive in a certain place, on coming home from the fields, go straight to the opening of the hive without any hesitation.